Ingenious >>>(Young Justice/Dick Grayson)<<<

Chapter 22

September 10th
09:45
Wayne Manor

Parker woke up with a killer headache. The familiar scent and feel of her own bed greeted her aching body. Then the memories hit her.

Last night...

She remembered.

She had... powers. She was a meta. She knew the truth. Her parents... She didn't even remember them. The false memories had faded. Still, the real ones seemed to be locked away. The key to access them was right there, but something told her she should not open them. The inhibitor must have severed any ties to the meta ability, including her mind losing control.

To her left, as she expected, was a sleeping mass. Dick lay there comfortably, and she would hate to get him up. The vigilantes got too little sleep as it was.

Using her ninja skills, she creeped out of her bed and went into her bathroom. A shower seemed like a reasonable task to complete. She ran the water. When she began pulling off her shirt, the mirror made her catch a glimpse of something she had never seen before. Turning, she saw her back. Soft, pink tissue covered a lot of the area. Scars she had never seen had appeared.

Looking more closely, she found a few on her stomach, her chest, and her legs. On the back of her neck she felt a burn. Someone had branded her. The only one evident on her face was a small, thin line on her cheekbone.

How she got the scars must be the memories she locked away. Somehow, her meta enhanced mind had erased the images from her brain. She had lied to herself.

She walked out twenty minutes later with a towel around her head and a bathrobe around her body.

"Good morning." Dick greeted, keeping his eyes respectfully trained on his book. "How are you?"

"I remember last night." She assured.

He sighed. "That could mean a number of different things." For all he knew, she could have altered the events of last night.

"I tried on an inhibitor. It worked." She stated.

He furrowed his brow. "Do you remember what it did?"

She shrugged. "I remember what I did last night, but everything that Bruce doesn't want me to remember... I don't know. It's like—it's there, but it's not. It's confusing." She walked into her closet.

After a moment of silence, he spoke again. "So," he began awkwardly. "You're a meta."

"Guess so." She called from her closet, not really knowing how to reply.

"What's it like?" From his tone, she could tell he was leaning back in the chair, thinking about the thing he was not.

She made a face he could not see, one that marveled at the question. "Uh—what do you want me to say?" So picked out a t-shirt from her massive pile and slipped it on.

"Is it cool?" He rephrased.

Parker came out of the closet, immediately sitting in her bed and grabbing her phone. "It's not anything. It just... is."

A skeptical look crept onto his face. "It's something."

Her phone was full of texts and emails and notifications. Staring at the lock screen for a moment, she threw it down on her bed. "Honestly, Dick, I'm scared." Her solemn, questioning expression produced an anger, flustered tone. "I don't know what the hell is happening to me, or why, and apparently it's not new. My whole life isn't real. I have lied to myself for so long that I have conflicting memories. I don't know what's real and what's not."